Is Snow Leopard the new Vista?

By Rory Reid on 09 November 2009, 8:00am

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Windows Vista faced a huge backlash for its egregious hardware requirements. Whereas XP ran happily on anything using a 233MHz CPU, 64MB of RAM and 1.5GB of disk space, Vista Home Premium demanded a 1GHz processor, at least 1GB of RAM and 40GB of storage. Worse still, anyone who wanted the fancy new Aero graphics features would need to ensure they had a decent graphics card -- and don't even get us started on the cash outlay required for tolerable DirectX 10 gaming. Understandably, Vista faced resistance from users who felt pressured into upgrading to expensive new hardware.

The resistance was hardly necessary, as most PCs at the time -- even the first wave of netbooks -- easily met Vista's minimum requirements. Microsoft attempted to allay our fears by providing software to test older PCs for Vista readiness and adorning new PC hardware with 'Vista Ready' or 'Vista Capable' livery. But the damage was done. The public knew Vista was greedier than XP, and one way or another, using it meant they'd have to reach for their credit cards.

Surely not Snow Leopard?

Believe it or not, it's possible that an even bigger hardware transition may be required for anyone moving from 10.5 Leopard to 10.6 Snow Leopard, though the backlash has been miminal. OS X 10.5 Leopard requires Macs with at least an 867MHz PowerPC G4 CPU, 512MB of RAM and 9GB of hard disk space.

Snow Leopard is far greedier. It actually refuses to run on any Apple hardware that doesn't use one of the 'new' Intel CPUs introduced circa 2006. Its memory requirements are relatively low at just 1GB, and it actually requires 4GB less disk space than Leopard, but there's no getting away from the fact: to enjoy Snow Leopard, many Mac users will need to buy an entirely new PC costing hundreds, or even -- as is more likely -- thousands of pounds.

Obviously, there are millions of users who won't need new hardware, as they're already using Intel Macs. It's reasonable to assume though, there are more people in the world using PowerPC Macs than Intel ones -- and if those people want Snow Leopard, they're going to have to pay a hefty price.